Ecco Dite
by Kore Anesidora
Summary: A quick psychological study of Homura. A "To the Stars" story. One shot.


**A quick psychological study of Homura. Also a "To the Stars" story, based on the mention of Homura chasing away a therapist. Lots of different references spattered throughout, but that's only to be expected of me honestly **

**Enjoy!**

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><p>They sat around the low triangle table drinking tea in their pencil-scratch dresses and their stick bodies, smiles of broken mirrors and eyes of button-glass; the brew poured dark and kaleidoscopic.<p>

"Do you take hemlock or blood-of-duck?"

"Yes, three spines of both."

There, the gentle clack of pale china and candy-canes, a scoop of sugar into the mouth, bacterial-sweet; the tea was passed to warming hands, huddled against a sternum. Conversation flowed like time, nowhere yet all at once and – upon occasion – pleasingly halting.

"What kept you, anyway?" Kyouko asked around a mouthful of bone coloured cake.

Homura sipped at the steaming cup, fragile between her narrow fingers, "I decided to walk instead of train. It was such a lovely day."

"I can hardly blame you," Mami said from the side. She tugged a checkerboard cozy over the cherry-red and starlight teapot, "Meteor showers like that shouldn't be missed."

"A few buildings burned from the downpour though."

Kyouko shrugged, "Omelettes, and eggs, and dragons' tongues – you know the saying." She swatted playfully at Sayaka, who tossed a flowery napkin at her cheeks smeared with marrow frosting.

"Still, seems such a shame," Madoka added to the side, almost as if to herself. She had already finished her tea, but she traced the ear of her cup as one would stroke a fond memory.

"So it does," Homura murmured. A strange look passed between them, but the others took no notice.

It was the 30th of April, and the clocks did not tick so much as they loomed, pendulums like morning-stars and sweeping arcs. Posters hung in white space – effigies in flames, and Furies with their snake-tongue hair, and the Devil chewing sinners, three-mouthed, three-headed: _P__álení __Č__arodějnic; Es Irrt Der Mensch So Lang Er Strebt; Acheronta Movebo; Gott Ist __T__ot; __Ecco Dite._

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><p><em>"Ecco Dite..."<em>

"Is that Italian?"

Homura blinked and looked up, "Pardon?"

That other world, those memories faded, and she was in the lounge of Mami's quarters, reserved for guests and friends, alone but for one other person. Mami herself had conveniently been called away on 'urgent business.' Homura had watched her go, expressionless, and then swung a cold gaze to Mami's 'friend,' a woman by the name of Atsuko Arisu with penetrating eyes and a penchant for probing other peoples' thoughts and running her thumb over the backs of her polished fingernails. Homura could feel the telepathic probe in her mind, a silent questing hovering on the edge of propriety and intrusion, never gleaning images, only broad emotional strokes.

"You were mumbling to yourself again," Atsuko pointed out, "It sounded like Italian."

"Oh?"

"And was it?" Atsuko pressed.

Homura shrugged and deflected, "Who can say?"

With a sigh Atsuko leaned back into her parabolic seat. She rapped her neon painted fingernails against the tablet screen resting on her knee, "I'm only interested in helping you, Akemi-san."

A rap at the door, and one of Mami's assistants entered with tea. Atsuko thanked her with a smile, Homura with a cool glance, and once again they were alone, "Here," Atsuko held out a cup and saucer, complete with a small synthetic silver spoon, "Your file indicated you like Assam with milk. I took the liberty of ordering it for you"

Homura took the tea and was only mildly disappointed to see a plain beverage, ordinary, as opposed to the bright caramel and candy-corn concoction served by Mami to their group of friends in her dreams.

"Would you like sugar as well?"

Madoka would have taken sugar. But Homura shook her head, "No. Thank you."

"Do you often find yourself slipping away?" Atsuko asked. She tapped the silvery spoon against the rim of her cup, a sharp staccato, like a twin-tined tuning fork, "Just as you did now?"

"Sometimes," Homura admitted vaguely.

"Have you ever in such an instance lost time?"

She paused at that question.

Even in previous lives Homura had been wont to forget time and stomach, appetite sliding out of reach as easily as friendships. She had blamed it on her heart condition when she was younger; pills filled her more easily than the company of others. Until Madoka. But in this life time was beyond her grasp. Sometimes, though, sometimes she caught herself reaching for a shield on her arm no longer present, and in those moments time rushed by like a gale flooded with memory.

The irony of it all made her want to smile, but instead she let out a little huff of amusement, which – by the tightening of the other's mouth – Atsuko thought was derisive.

"You should take this more seriously, Akemi-san," Atsuko's tone was sharp, reproachful.

"Why?" Homura retorted, "I'm only here to satisfy Mami. Nothing more." She raised the teacup to her mouth and grimaced when met with bitter black leaves instead of candy-floss. The unmatched expectation proved as jarring as always.

"Then it would go faster for both of us if you cooperated," Atsuko all but growled. For a therapist she was rather abrasive. Or perhaps her 'patient' rubbed her the wrong way.

For a long moment they exchanged a tense and quiet glare. Then Homura placed the tea upon the table beside her, cup and saucer clacking with finality, "Fine." She leaned forward and held out her hand, palm up, "I permit you to view my thoughts."

Eyes narrowed in sudden suspicion, Atsuko balanced her own cup upon the armrest of her chair. She met Homura's unwavering gaze, and before her own resolve could falter she all but lunged forward to grasp Homura's outstretched hand.

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><p>There was a sort of madness in repetition. In wanting a moment to last forever. Somewhere along the way you had lost track of moving beyond the month of April, a season of ploughs and broken earth and torched conifers, snapping in the flames. May would approach but never dawn and somehow time still soldiered on, furrows pulled by grey oxen with their low-swinging heads. In that space your wish had become instead a wager; one you'd never win.<p>

_Quaerens me sedisti lassus; redemisti crucem passus; tantus labr non sit cassus._

When had it all become lies? Hadn't it started with purity and truth – you would never lie to Her, would you? Whence the first deception, the nature of your crimes unbidden, unrepentant? You did not deny it, no. Here you stood and here you struck and work was never done. You'd kill Her all over again if it meant saving Her. Arrow to the heart. Gun to the temple. Fingers trembling at the trigger, at the taut bowstring. How lies become you.

_Ingemisco tamquam reus; culpa rubet __u__ultus meus; supplicanti parce, Deus._

_Ecco Dite. _You made it, this Hell; there's none but you to blame. Imps like little girls and you the Devil, three-faced, three-stomached, three times as deep as Heaven is high and cursed with thrice the appetite of all your previous lives combined, starved for friendship, for syrup-seeded pomegranates and toffee-dipped apples and cotton-mouthed song, but most of all for love.

_Sie ist gerichtet; ist gerettet._

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><p>In the time it took for their hands to touch, Atsuko jerked back, scalded. Her elbow hit the teacup resting on the arm of her chair, sending the brew flying, crashing to the ground, a dark wounding spray. Her hand flew to her mouth, repressing the urge to gag and her green eyes filled with tears. Atsuko leapt to her feet and scrambled for the wastebin, followed by the sound of heaving, a wet splash, then sobbing interspersed with gasps for air. She fled not long after, tears streaming down her face, door slamming behind her.<p>

Homura turned, picked up the nearby cup and saucer, and took a sip of tepid tea; she should have accepted sugar.

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><p><strong>FIN.<strong>


End file.
